Since a recent GQ Magazine article outed his homophobic and pro-Jim-crow views, left-wing commentators have declared open season on Phil Robertson, the patriarch of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty.” Robertson, based on his reading of Christian scriptures, considers homosexuality a sin and predicts that homosexuals will be excluded from the Kingdom of God.

Cooper’s Bible and Robertson’s Bible are the same. However, Cooper’s practice of “hermeneutic [interpretive] consistency” differentiates her from Robertson who likely reads scripture literally (as if a literal reading were possible). Those of us who treasure scripture would do well to emulate a thoughtful and compelling approach like Cooper’s. Hers is a living theology.

For Cooper, the “first and foremost” truth disclosed by the Bible is that “God is love.” Intent on making scripture consistent with this fundamental truth, she rejects passages that contradict it. Cooper acknowledges that the Bible sanctions slavery. But since she is certain that a loving “God is not a racist,” she rejects racist scriptural passages. She agrees with Robertson that the Bible “declares sex between men to be an abomination.” But since she is certain that a loving “God is not a homophobe,” she rejects homophobic scriptural passages.

Contra Robertson, a living theology, according to Jewish theologian, Michael Fishbane, treats ancient, sacred writings as more than simple and fixed storehouses of information. A living theology, Fishbane writes in Sacred Attunement, includes an intentional, ongoing effort of “adaptation and clarification” of religious texts. This effort helps us remain alert to the traces of transcendence that break through our everyday consciousness and to “sustain (and even revive)” them “in the normal course of life.”

Readers of the Bible who eschew the effort of adapting and clarifying scripture cut themselves off from traces of transcendence. Their theologies are dead.

Also, the unquestioning acceptance touted by such as Robertson is neither coherent nor honest. Though literalist Christians believe that they take scripture at face value, they necessarily, at some level, interpret it.

On some issues the Bible is inconsistent or opaque. Martin Luther, who advocated relying on scripture to decide all issues, discovered that, at times, it is silent on important questions—for example, child baptism. As a result, each of us, whether we are aware of it or not, constructs meta-Bibles out of passages we select from the actual Bible. We assemble proof-texts that make sense to us or align with our commitments and values. We downplay Biblical proscriptions that inconveniently conflict with our favored mores—for example, the indifference of many contemporary Protestants to Jesus’ prohibition on divorce. Contradictory passages are set aside (Cooper does this with admirable transparency and clarity of purpose) or hyper-interpreted until they harmonize.

Consider in this regard, Robertson’s likely view that God so loved us that he sent his only Son to die for us on the cross. This is an interpretation of the crucifixion to which St. Paul hints in the New Testament but which did not enter the arc of Christian thought as a fully rendered doctrine until Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) developed the satisfaction theory of Christ’s atonement.

Proof-texting and interpreting the Bible is unavoidable.

In addition, as Fishbane notes, the books of the Bible were spliced together. Varying worldviews and theological commitments are interwoven, sometimes within a single passage. Thus, scripture itself is an example of the work of interpretation and revision; its internal disagreements invite us—nay, prod us—to follow its lead and adapt and clarify. By doing so, we keep scripture and our theology alive.

Fishbane helpfully recommends reading events in the Bible as “theological expressions of primordial truth. The narratives of scripture thus become paradigms of perennial matters bearing on divine presence (both transcendence and immanence), as well as the human response to them.” More generally, “the old words of scripture are spaces for ever-new moments of spiritual consciousness and self-transformation.”

Christians like Robertson resist looking for such spaces and maintain their (imagined) literal grip on scripture. Joan Walsh calls Robertson a “bigoted pseudo-Christian” but she’s wrong about the “pseudo-Christian” part. Robertson is a Christian; his beliefs rest on interpretations at odds with those she prefers. There’s no doubt, though, Walsh is right about the “bigoted” part. Let’s be clear: Robertson’s dead theology is downright ugly.

You’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer and told you have two months to live.

Powerless, right?

The message of Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer is familiar: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

But what about taking Niebuhr’s prayer a step further. What if you actually chose the bad things you can’t change?

Without a doubt, you wouldn’t have chosen terminal cancer had been given a choice. Who willingly chooses cancer? Cancer chooses you. But choose it in return and you’re back in control.

One of France’s favorite saints, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, did just that. Here’s how her version of Niebuhr’s prayer might have sounded: “God grant me the serenity to embrace the things I cannot change, to choose them as if on my own terms, to choose them as if I wanted them.”

Thérèse, a Carmelite nun, died a drawn-out and painful death from tuberculosis. She vomited blood. Bedsores afflicted her. Her Mother Superior denied her the relief of morphine. Unable to take a sip of water or swallow a spoonful of food without suffering waves of nausea, she practiced what she called the Little Way—the choosing of what was handed to her.

One of Thérèse’s biographers, Monica Furlong, finds genius in the Little Way: “to lie dying an excruciating death that took away the little privacies and forms of self-control which are precious to most of us, to endure almost unremitting pain, to have to rely on others for the smallest services…was to have ‘the last shred of dignity’ forcibly ripped away. What else to do then but to ‘choose it,’ to respond to it out of freedom rather than out of necessity?”

Some interpret the Little Way as the way of subservience, especially for women. But, as Furlong points out, the Little Way has “an almost ironic quality to it. ‘If I may have nothing,’ it says gaily, ‘then I will turn reason inside out and make having nothing the most enjoyable of possibilities.’” In essence, Thérèse charts a way “to live out an impossible situation.”

And so, faced with terminal lung cancer, the Little Way would say, “if I may lose my life to cancer in two months, I will turn reason inside out and choose the cancer.” Seemingly powerless before the advance of one’s disease, one may choose snatch the cards one’s been dealt and play them triumphantly, powerfully, as if they were “the purest piece of luck.”

Did her practice of the Little Way as she succumbed to tuberculosis make Thérèse a saint? According to Furlong, “at the time of her canonization Cardinal Vico described how, in the early days of the Catholic Church, people became saints by popular acclaim… Several centuries had passed without a popular saint.” And yet, Thérèse became such a saint. In her, ordinary people saw courage and strength. From her, they drew encouragement to face the bad things in life. They embraced her as their own. Indeed, rare is the church in France without a statue of Saint Thérèse.

Often, the Little Way is not the best way. The Little Way isn’t the best way for the Russians who are pouring into the streets to protest Vladimir Putin’s over-reach. Many challenges are worth a good fight—like securing hot meals for underprivileged kids in public schools, or seeking refuge in a battered women shelter, or working to prevent contamination of the drinking water in your community, etc. These are not scenarios that call for the Little Way.

But some scenarios come without options. They have only one possible outcome. A bad one.

May you never find yourself power-less. If you do, the Little Way could return you to a sense of power-fulness. You could decide to embrace the non-negotiables that life throws at you. You could put yourself back in charge.

No longer content to hike the Appalachian trail or climb Denali, devout secularists have turned their sights on pilgrim routes. One such route is the Way of St. James which wends through rugged French terrain, up and over the Pyrenees, and across the desolate plains of Northern Spain until it reaches the city of Santiago, just short of the Atlantic coast that ancients believed to be the edge of the world. The Way now attracts a great deal of attention not just from pilgrims but from such challenge-seekers. Anxious to share the good news of this difficult, but achievable journey, some return home and write guides to assist their fellow non-pilgrims. So what? So this: some of these writers, anxious to underscore their secular motivations, betray in their travelogues their distaste for religious piety.

Such is the viewpoint of Conrad Rudolph, Professor of Medieval Art at the University of California Riverside. In Pilgrimage to the End of the World, his book about hiking the Way of St. James, he repeatedly reminds the reader that he is most definitely “not a believer in miracles or the otherworldly.” The book’s very title serves as Rudolph’s first disclaimer. A bona fide pilgrim undertakes the journey to reach the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela because its Cathedral is reputed to house the remains of Jesus’ disciple, Saint James the Greater. Rudolph, seemingly worried that he’ll be mistaken for a religious pilgrim, signals, in his title, that the real goal of his pilgrimage was not the purported relics of St. James but the Atlantic Ocean, the “End of the World,” which is three days further on foot. No wonder then, that when Rudolph reaches Santiago, traditionally the “emotional high point” of the journey, he describes his arrival as “fun but not emotional.”

And so we have the novel phenomenon of pilgrimages undertaken by secularists, so embarrassed by the religious trappings of their journeys that they feel compelled to trumpet their lack of faith.

Rudolph defends his decision to hike The Way by explaining that he is merely following the ancient tradition of the “curious” onlooker. According to him, even in Medieval times, “many were highly curious about the world around them.” Apparently, this condition was so widespread that it was common for condemnations to be issued against those who made pilgrimages merely for reasons of “curiosity.”

Okay, point taken. Except that Rudolph’s curiosity never extends to wondering what it might be (or have been) like for pilgrims to undertake the journey to Santiago out of faith. Indeed, most pilgrims, are not “inveterate hikers” like Rudolph and so they, like their Medieval forebears, likely endure greater suffering as they negotiate rough terrain with heavy backpacks. What motivates them to keep going day after day? How does their faith sustain them when they are ailing, hurting and still weeks from reaching their goal? If Rudolph asked these questions of pilgrims he met along the way, he does not share the answers in his book.

The Way of St. James was especially popular during the Middle Ages. It attracted many pilgrims from France but pilgrims also set out from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, the eastern Austrian domains, and Slovakia. Before they could officially begin their treks, they first had to reach the town of Le Puy in France’s Massif Central. Then, braving bandits, persistent hunger, unpredictable weather, and ankle-busting paths, they set off to walk the thousand miles to Santiago. There’s every reason to suspect that the roundtrip journey would have lasted six months since Medieval pilgrims covered, on average, about 15 miles a day. While they belonged to all social classes, most pilgrims were penniless agrarians, serfs who set out for Santiago after becoming too broken down to provide useful labor to their masters or freeholders who “were better off in theory only.” Although poverty-stricken and often in ill health, tens of thousands set off on pilgrimage every year.

Why did these Medieval serfs and freeholders choose to undertake this journey? According to William Melczer, a Medieval scholar, they had many reasons. Pious love for St. James was the most common. Some went simply to pray. Others wanted forgiveness for a laundry-list of minor transgressions. Many used the journey as penance to atone for particularly soul-searing sins. Still others made their way to plead for better health and relief from pain. Their spirits were open to God and they had faith. How often they must have prayed, especially when they looked at the path ahead, knowing full well that having overcome one challenge, they would reach another. They rarely had enough food, often they had only pathetic shelter. Somehow, though, every morning, they found fresh courage and set off anew in spite of the hardships they had already endured and in spite of the hardships that awaited them.

Interestingly, theologians have discouraged pilgrimages. Church Doctors like Augustine railed against them. In his opinion they were “pointless” because the holy cannot “be localized in any given place.” And since the holy is everywhere, it follows that the holy is not found in extra measure in places where sacred relics are housed. No matter. For hundreds of years, pilgrims have ignored these theological directives. They know that when life follows its regular rhythms, the holy, though everywhere present, is easy to ignore. So they walk to be with God. During a thousand miles of contemplation, the holy is close—as close as one’s breath.

Why did Rudolph undertake this journey? He’s quite unclear on that score, fuzzy even. He writes about wandering through the early dawn light along a mountain ridge in northwestern Spain where the wind rustled the grass, the sun sparkled, and sheep bells sounded faintly from far off vales. His language is evocative and lovely, his prose pleasant. From time to time, he invokes the language of magic, saying “it was almost as if a spell had been cast.” Perhaps afraid of venturing into intellectually indefensible territory, he changes his mind and rejects magic, writing that, after all, “experiences like these can happen anywhere.” And then, he recants, explaining that, unlike walking Appalachian trail or hiking Denali, there is a special pay-off to pilgrimages because these experiences “don’t often happen with either the regularity or the strength that they did on the pilgrimage, where every day is an adventure…” Hmmm, not sure most hikers would agree.

In the end, Rudolph shifts gears again. It is not the “almost-magic” quality of his experiences, he decides, but the people he meets who made the journey a special event. The people are, he recalls, “almost consistently as interested in what you’re doing as you are yourself.”

Oh oh. Wait a minute here. There’s just a little problem.

People were consistently interested in what Rudolph was doing because they assumed that he was travelling to Santiago out of deeply-felt, religious convictions. Although a hiker, he decided to wear a clamshell tied to a cord around his neck. The clamshell is the symbol of St. James. By wearing it, Rudolph styled himself as a pilgrim. It placed him, he admits, in a “special group…worthy of immediate public informality, warmth, and help, no questions asked.” He recounts how, in a small mountain village, two old women “bless” him when they learn he is a pilgrim. Even more notable, he says, are those who ask him “to pray for them; one horribly desperate man clearly needing it, or something, very badly.”

For unfathomable reasons, Rudolph accepts those prayer requests. Sort of. After he arrives in Santiago and enters St. James Cathedral, he explains (with a clear conscience) that, “no,” he didn’t pray for the “horribly desperate man.” Nor did he pray “for any of the others who had asked [him] along the way to pray for them.” It is enough, he decides, to “think about them” as he stands in the transept. How lame is that? Would the “horribly desperate man” agree with him or would he hope that even a hiker like Rudolph would, upon reaching the Cathedral at the end of the road, drop his pride, bend his knees, and pray?

These, then, are some of the quandaries you will face if you are a devoutly-secular hiker interested in hiking the Way of St. James or some other pilgrimage route. Why choose this option instead of a hike through one of America’s or Europe’s fine national parks? Will you wear the pilgrim’s badge? Will you accept the kindness of strangers even when you realize they offer it because they mistake you for a pilgrim? Will you accept prayer requests? Will you honor those requests? How?

Whatever you decide, you will be just as welcome on the pilgrim routes as you would have been in Medieval times. To close, here are some verses from “La Pretiosa,” a 12th Century hymn about a hospice for pilgrims on the road to Santiago. Other stanzas describe how monks would wash the feet, cut the hair, and trim the beards of male pilgrims—services you are, sad to say, unlikely to find today.

Its doors open to the sick and well,

to Catholics as well as to pagans,

Jews, heretics, beggars, and the indigent,

and it embraces all like brothers.

Resources: David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000); William Melczer, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York: Italica Press, 1993); Conrad Rudolph, The Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Courage! Howard Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual uses outdated, high-flown language, is written in the mode of all-men-all-of-the-time, and mentions several, mostly-forgotten dead people. Still, his exercises and meditations are worth a look.

Besides, Lent isn’t supposed to be easy. So, as Westwood might say, abandon your safe haven and sail into the high seas of engaged reflection.

Here are a few more days from his Manual, in grey, one of the colors of the season.

DAY 6 (1st Tuesday): “We Avow Our Faith”
“Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other.” These words of Luther remind us of a statement by Prof. Kirsopp Lake: “Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequence — a courageous trust in the great purpose of all things and pressing forward to finish the work which is in sign, whatever the price may be.” So do we avow our faith, without hesitation, equivocation or apology. For the moment we leave argument and discussion behind. We are engaged in an enterprise that we will defend at all hazards and promote without compromise. We do not ask for a secure haven for we propose to sail the high seas. We do not ask for guaranteed certainty for we possess what is more important, the inward certitude of consecrated purpose.

Exercise: Dwell upon the assertion, “We become what we affirm.” Some psychologists condemn wishful thinking, therefore comment on, “The right kind of wishful thinking leads to creative power.”

Meditation: Spirit of Life, give us the courage to match our purpose, the will to endure and the trust which falters not. Above all, strengthen daily within us faith equal to our high resolve.

[The 2nd week’s theme.]IMPLICATIONS OF THE AVOWAL

DAY 7 (2nd Wednesday): “In God”
In his essay “Is Life Worth Living?” William James utters words of profound insight in declaring “God himself may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity.” He also quotes William Salter, the late leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society: “As the essence of courage is to stake one’s life as a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.” In avowing our faith in God, we are staking our life on the possibility that the world is not a meaningless void, but that the highest within us reflects and reveals the Life and Intelligence through which all things exist.”

Exercise: Dwell on St. Paul’s statement, “We are co-laborers with God.” What do you think about the quotation from Wm. James?

Meditation: O Soul of All in the heart of each, help me to trust my deepest intuitions as expression of thy purpose, and in loyal devotion teach me to fulfill them in the experience of life.

DAY 8 (2nd Thursday): “In Eternal Love”
How keen in their insight these words of the Bard of Avon:

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.

How beautiful in its constancy the frequent devotion of husband and wife, of parent and child! Yet human love is sometimes inconstant, for often it is influenced by changing circumstance and the passing of the years. The prophet causes the Eternal to say, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Reflect on the eternal constancy of Nature in the rhythms of day
and night, the seasons, seed-time and harvest, etc. Note the great certainties in the invariableness of Nature’s laws. The manifestations of Nature are infinite, but Nature herself is unchanging. The laws of Love are likewise unchanging.

Exercise: The thought in the lesson is a challenge to our own constancy. This phase of the avowal is a pledge to overcome fickleness of mood and temper. Let us examine ourselves in this.

Meditation: O Spirit of Love, how often have we betrayed thee! By they divine constancy, control our changing moods and the waywardness of our affections. Keep the compass of our spirits ever true.

DAY 9 (2nd Friday): In All-Conquering Love
It is the nature of Love never to know defeat. Among the most revealing parables of the Great Teacher is that of the Lost Sheep, in which the shepherd seeks for the wanderer from the fold “until he finds it.” In his majestic poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson likens the Divine Spirit to a relentless seeker forever on the trail of the soul of man. Likewise, the unknown author of the 139th Psalm, when he exclaims, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

In his hour of trial George Matheson cried, “O Love, that wilt not let me go!” There is a persistent quality in Love which never surrenders.

Exercise: Read Thompson’s poem referred to in the less. Take the time, even if you have to visit a library to obtain the poem. Treat the thought personally, “Love is destined to have its way with me.”

Meditation: O Love forever seeking us, teach experiences of our lives, thou art indeed the highest expression of the Universal Life. Teach me the secret of thine enduring patience, for in this is the assurance that thou shalt prevail, even with me.

Phew. Comps are over! Now onward to the dissertation proposal. A Ph.D. student’s work is never done–or so it seems.

The season of Lent has begun. Whether or not you spent last Wednesday with a sooty cross on your forehead, you may be wondering how to participate in this season. Horace Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual could be just the ticket. While serving as a Unitarian minister, the Reverend Westwood wrote a Manual making it a straightforward affair to participate in Lent through the practice of a daily, guided meditation. It’s a wonderful resource–because, after all, who wants to reinvent the wheel for every religious holiday. Should you decide to create your own manual, however, please share!

Westwood’s Manual is based on his faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love. The Manual is broken down by weekly themes and daily meditations except for Sundays since Westwood assumed Lentenites would be in Church (where else could you possibly want to be?).

Now, for the promised manual. The foreword explains how Westwood intended it to be used. Also included are Saturday’s meditation to situate and prepare you for today’s meditation, the first Monday of Lent.

FOREWORD

The Great Avowal: “We avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love.” (The Worcester Statement)

This Lenten booklet is based on the plan of a brief daily lesson, followed by an exercise and a meditation. The purpose of the lesson, however, is not to instruct but to stimulate thought on the part of the reader. It makes little difference whether or not there is agreement with the writer. The important thing is that those who follow the lessons should do their own thinking and form their own conclusions. In other words, this is a work booklet.

It is not intended to encourage sentimental piety, than which there is no greater enemy to religion. The times [1939] demand a certain ruggedness of temper and incisiveness of mind. The period through which the world is passing calls for spiritual hardihood, fortitude and strength. While our central theme is “Eternal and All-Conquering Love,” and while we may not overlook that Love has its tender side, the reader is reminded that Love can be most searching in its demands and stern in its requirements.

A few practical suggestions for the best use of the booklet:

(1) Set aside a definite period each day during Lent, at least ten minutes, better still, fifteen
or twenty.

(2) Try to relax and quiet the mind before reading the lesson.

(3) Read the lesson slowly and thoughtfully.
Sometimes its thought may seem obscure and sometimes you may profoundly disagree. Well, this is a sign that you are using your mind, which is the important thing.

(4) Use the exercises faithfully

(5) Keep a notebook and record your reactions.

(6) Use the meditation as a sincere expression of your own purpose.

(7) Remember that in using these lessons day by day you are sharing an experience with hundreds of others who are doing the same thing. Seek, then, to become aware of the fellowship you share. It will be to you a source of encouragement and power. Also, you will be a source of inspiration to others.

[The 1st week’s theme.]THE IMPORTANCE OF THE AVOWAL

DAY 4 (1st Saturday): A Way of Behavior
The importance of the Great Avowal [“We avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love”] lies in that it is more than an argument. It means that you and I pledge ourselves to a particular way of life. It means that we “highly resolve” to behave as though Love were the Supreme Reality behind the centuries of history and the events of the passing show. It means, despite the terrible record of the past few years, despite dictatorships, concentration camps, persecutions and the exploitation of human life on behalf of the “will to power,” and despite the hatred of class struggle, war and revolution, we proclaim that Love will endure and will prevail.

Exercise: Why do we say “to behave” rather than “to live”? Comment on, “A reasonable argument without the committal of self to the conclusion is of no avail.”

Meditation:
Creation’s Lord, we give thee thanks
That this thy world is incomplete;
That battle calls our marshaled ranks
That work awaits our hands and feet;

That thou hast not yet finished man,
That we are in the making still, –
As friends who share the Maker’s plan,
As sons who know the Father’s will.

Since what we choose is what we are,
And what we love we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar, –
The will to win it makes us free.
(William De Witt Hyde)

DAY 5 (1st Monday): The Importance of Demonstration
How few of us realize that there is a sense in which we make the truth! When Clara Barton undertook her great work during the Civil War she began to make the truth of the Red Cross movement. When Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do,” he added to the truth of the power of magnanimity and the redeeming strength of the forgiving heart. In later lessons we shall discover that the avowal of “God as Eternal and All-Conquering Love” is grounded in reason. But because we avow it, we make it the truth by which we conduct the affairs of life. We enter upon the most thrilling and daring of adventures. Cowardly spirits will shrink from the enterprise. What more important task could we undertake than to demonstrate the Supremacy of Love?

Exercise: We must beware of sentimentalism in our thought of love. Contemplate the sentence, “Love can be hard.” Review previous lessons.

Meditation: O Love revealing to us the heart of God and the depths of the soul of Man, give us the wisdom to perceive thee at work behind the events of the hour. We would adventure with thee into the dark places of life and reveal thy power in thought, word, and deed.

Are you satisfied with a purely secular approach to the Christmas season? If not, you might consider spending some time reading the New Testament gospels and reflecting on the life and teachings of Jesus that they depict.

Skeptics will resist this suggestion but could soften their stance when they learn that respected thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Buber (yes, the 20th Century Jewish philosopher!) would have nodded their assent. Both considered the gospels to be sources of immense wisdom. They had no illusion about the human authorship of the Bible; this did not prevent them from engaging it energetically and with seriousness of purpose. In so doing, they testify to its importance. Both adopted unique approaches to Scripture; their approaches offer helpful examples of how we too might to read it.

Although he didn’t consider Jesus to be divine, Thomas Jefferson was inspired by the Biblical Jesus’ message—albeit in its distinctly human dimension. New Testament verses concerning morality and sin met with Jefferson’s approval but the miracles and Jesus’ resurrection struck him as implausible. Jefferson decided to extract the passages reflecting his ideas about Jesus from the four Gospels to create a single, unified gospel. Over a period of several years, he selected passages from six different (hardcopy) Bibles, cut them out (with scissors—yup, the old, old-fashioned way), and pasted them together (with glue) to create his own, integrated gospel. His Bible selection included excerpts from the King James Bible, a Greek Bible, one in Latin, and two more in French. He entitled his cut-and-paste Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

What follows is the narrative of Jesus’ birth from Jefferson’s Bible. Because this account only appears in the gospel of Luke, Jefferson relied on uniquely on Luke to redact his version of the nativity:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. Lk 2:1

(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) Lk 2:2

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. Lk 2:3

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David.) Lk 2:4

To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. Lk 2:5

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. Lk 2:6

And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them at the inn. Lk 2:7

And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, Lk 2:21

And when they had performed all things according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. Lk 2:39

Although this passage doesn’t include the moral teachings so important to Jefferson, it does show that he had no qualms about altering sacred Scripture to make it his own–including the story of Jesus’ birth.

Given when and where he lived, it isn’t surprising that Jefferson considered Jesus, the man, a source of inspiration. However, it is surprising that Martin Buber, best known for his book of Jewish theology, I and Thou, considered Jesus his great brother. Buber found much significance in Jesus’ suffering, his self-doubt and his death. Indeed, Buber wrote:

“From my youth onwards, I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Saviour has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand… my own fraternally open relationship with him has grown ever stronger and clearer… For nearly 50 years, the New Testament has been a main concern in my studies.”

In Jesus, Buber found a great son of Israel. He found the genuine Jewish principle manifest in Jesus’ teachings. He also felt a strong kinship to the Jesus depicted in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke—that is to say, a strong kinship for the plain and embodied man grappling with concrete situations.

For Buber, it was this Jesus, the one who, struggling in the depth of the actual moment, found eternity. He had the highest regard for the man who lacked certainty about his nature, who experienced shocks to this certainty, and whose last question was ‘Why’?

If Buber had less affinity for the version of Jesus depicted in the gospel of John, this was because John’s Jesus entered the spiritual realm where he was no longer open to attacks of self-questioning.

Buber ascribed enormous importance to passages like the following one from the Sermon on the Mount (in the gospel of Matthew): “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors SO THAT you may become the children of your Father in heaven.” Based on his research, Buber held that until Jesus spoke those words, nowhere else had love for others been described as the path to becoming a child of God.

In Buber’s view, Jesus’ statement rose out of Israel’s faith, it implied it, and yet at the same time, supplemented it. It opened the door to all those who really love. Buber celebrated Jesus as the religious leader who challenged human beings, for the first time in our history, to Love our enemies and pray for our persecutors so that we might become what we were meant to be, brothers and sisters to one another.

Should you, like Buber or Jefferson, decide to revisit the Bible during this season of Advent then, like them, you will want to acknowledge the ugly parts of the gospels, or of any other Biblical book for that matter, if that’s what those passages deserve. Neither Buber nor Jefferson approached Scripture with naive reverence. They relied on their analytic and critical skills to winnow “the grain from the chaff.”

Jefferson explained his approach in a letter he wrote to William Short, a Unitarian with whom he corresponded about religious matters during the years he worked to create his personal Gospel. In one of those letters, he said:

“We find in the writings of [Jesus’] biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed.”

If you (re)visit the gospels, why not start with the gospel of Luke? Not only does this gospel contain the story at the core of this season’s Christmas celebration, but it is prized for its literary elegance, its great interest in the poor, the “lost,” women, Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles. Luke’s book has received much praise for what has been called his universalism based on his willingness to be inclusive of a variety of interests and audiences. Some have even speculated a woman wrote this gospel.

Who knows, after reading Luke’s account, you, like Jefferson and Buber, might discover beauty and truth in the Biblical story of Jesus. You might even, in this busy and often spirit-draining time of Advent, find a meaning in Jesus’ birth that’s all your own, enabling you to invite him to the bash you’re throwing in his name. On some level this holiday is universal–there’s something in it for everyone–Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Christians and atheists.

So go ahead, pick up a Bible and find the gospels. Read a passage. Or two. What is there to lose–except the sinking feeling that Christmas is little more than an opportunity for gift-giving and sweets-eating?

Those who turn over part of their day to spiritual exercises know that a process like the four-step lectio divina process takes dedication and practice. Without a doubt, the more transcendent the God, the harder it is to reach that God. Because smart readers want to know, and there were smart readers during the late medieval ages (the golden age of mysticism), a whole host of spiritual ‘how-to’ guides were written and circulated. Their purpose? Not much different from today’s–to offer helpful tips to monastics and devout lay-people trying to make a connection with an invisible, unknowable God through ascetic devotions.

One such manual was written by a Spaniard called Francisco de Osuna in the early 1500’s. A Franciscan monk whose life was dedicated to prayer, he not only meditated on the passion of Christ but he also practiced what he called ‘recollection.’ This term doesn’t mean ‘to remember,’ but rather to collect one’s self again and again—the way we use the word when we say something like: “she’s always so calm and collected!” For Osuna, becoming spiritually ‘collected’ was best achieved through a process of prayer designed to go deeper into one’s self rather than designed to turn outward to ‘mere word and reading’ (a dig at lectio divina?). Perfect recollection “is a moderation and serenity of the soul that is as quiet as if becalmed and purified and disciplined in harmony within.” Osuna wanted nothing less than to achieve a state of nearly-permanent recollection, or of alertness and receptivity to God.

Osuna’s recollection demands both mental concentration and active directing of the mind, but the pay-off of such hard work (so he claimed) is making friendship and communion with God possible—a friendship he described as “more sure and more intimate than ever existed between brothers or even between mother and child.”

He wrote several books but the Third Spiritual Alphabet is the ‘how-to’ guide for recollection. A ‘spiritual alphabet’ will strike some as strange. Osuna decided to organize his maxims and treatises according to the letters (and the Spanish tilde) of the alphabet as an act of humility. In his words, “We must become as little children, learning our ABC’s of spirituality.”

Osuna’s alphabet proceeds logically, describing the process one follows as one ascends from the lower stages of recollection to the higher. One is to move through the three major forms of prayer, from lowest to highest:

vocal prayer (active)

prayer of the heart (active)

mental or spiritual prayer (passive)

Realizing that distractions and run-away thoughts can plague even the most experienced re-collector, Osuna recommends disciplining the soul gently and lovingly. The exercise of recollection, he says, ‘is not achieved by force but by skill’ and ‘nothing is more skillful than love, which should be like the whip used to start a top so it will spin again and always turn without falling over.”

Osuna also warned that, especially at first, we must be ready to dedicate lots of time and effort (he recommended 2 hours per day!) to practicing spiritual prayer. If we persevered, he promised that the day would come when we would realize that the highest stage, spiritual prayer, “is most certainly worth more than an entire year in vocal prayer.”

Recollection requires that we learn to calm and quiet the understanding. Since God (or at least the God recollection is designed to reach) is beyond the capacity of ordinary thought to comprehend, we cannot approach God via ordinary thought. Instead, we must achieve the nearly-impossible feat (especially for the novice) of directing all of our spiritual attention to God. If we pull this off, then “In the darkness of unknowing the soul feels reassured by the light of spiritual consolations, when it feels the stirring of joy in the soul as a result.”

To critics of spiritual consolations or to those who practice them for no other reason than to tap into the happiness-center of the brain (the left frontal cortex), Osuna would have countered: as “long as we do not desire them for our own sake but for the sake of loving God, then they are entirely appropriate.”

So, if you’re one of those lucky people with a couple of hours a day to spare, then by all means, try Osuna-style recollection. Whether your God is utterly transcendent or not, no one ever promised exercise would be easy, not even the spiritual kind.

Stuff in books can help us pray. The monastics prayed through divine reading – in fact, a twelfth-century Carthusian monk by name of Guigo II worked out the four-step process that’s been in use ever since.

And what are those four steps? Reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation.

You’ll want to select a passage—a paragraph from a book, a short poem, or a few verses from Scripture. You can choose a favorite passage or one that you find challenging.

Before you start, take a few deep breaths. Now you’re ready to begin.

First, reading. Read your passage slowly several times, paying attention to the words, how they fit together, their rhythms, their meanings, their themes. If you’ve chosen a ‘secular’ poem or piece of prose, you may wish to rewrite it to turn it into a prayer. If you’ve chosen a theological or scriptural passage, rewrite it (if need be) to make it fit your theology. Or you can use the text as is—whatever works best for you.

Take this stanza from “Ode to the Table” by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. The words in bold are Neruda’s originals; I added the italicized text to turn Neruda’s stanza into a prayer.

Oh God,
You made the world a table
“engulfed in honey and smoke,
smothered by apples and blood.
The table is already set,
and we know the truth
as soon as we are called:
whether we’re called to war or to dinner
we will have to choose sides,
have to know
how we’ll dress
to sit
at the long table,
whether we’ll wear the pants of hate
or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.
It’s time to decide,
they’re calling.” Help us make the right choice, oh God.

Second, meditation. Which words or passages catch your attention? Sit quietly with them. Let them sit in your mind like stones in your hand, smooth if comforting, rough if challenging.

How would this work? If you used the Neruda example for your text-based prayer, you could reflect on the juxtaposition of honey/apple with smoke/blood. Or you could focus on the image of the world as a table—what would it mean to imagine the world as a place where you eat, where life is a meal—what would nourish you, what would make you ill, what would make you hunger for more?How about the idea that in times of war, we have to make a decision?If you had to choose sides, which would you choose? You could consider whether one side is always the side of hate and the other the side of love, as Neruda suggests.

Third, prayer. Respond to the meditation by praying, not intellectually, but by speaking (aloud or in your head) your own words directly to God.

Fourth, contemplation. Set all words aside if you can and enter into the space created by the word-prayers. This is a time of simple focus on God, a time of resting in God.

If you carry out the spiritual practice of divine reading at the same time every day, it will become a habit. An hour is ideal, or half-an-hour in the morning and another at night. This may sound like a lot but the mind often takes a while to settle into quiet receptiveness. Also, you’ll want to choose comfortable clothes and a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed or distracted.

Think you’re number one?Who doesn’t?Are you a narcissist? Hey, who isn’t? After all, our interior world is most vivid to ourselves. Who could possibly know and care for our well-being and happiness better than ourselves?A tidy amount of Me-Centrism is desirable (we Americans prefer to call it self-esteem), but in sloppy-sized doses, it turns into self-absorption. Result: lack of interest in, and lack of concern for others. Not you, you say?When was the last time you stepped out of the internal monologue a-buzzing in your head or the fatigue from a long day‘s work to look the checkout clerk at Dominick’s in the eye?You know, like he was a real person worthy of your attention (which, of course, he is)?And did you say, “Hello, how are you today?”And were really interested in the answer?Or did you look away before he finished telling you?

A little thing, sure, this saying hello, how are you.But imagine how different our every-day would be if we stepped out of our heads and shook off our tiredness just long enough to treat each other like each one of us mattered.Imagine the ordinary wonderfulness of a simple “after you” as we stepped onto the bus or walked into the elevator.Or letting a car (or two) merge ahead of us on a clogged freeway, or smiling at the stranger on the street for no good reason, or paying our frenenmy an unsolicited compliment, or turning off our cell phone to give a friend our full attention.With all that free-flowing kindness, especially in these hard economic times, who knows what we could achieve?Our quest for meaning could literally end.We would all find peace of mind.Messianism would have come to pass.

The great religious faith traditions ask their followers, at some point during the year, to step-out of their daily routines and orient themselves toward something greater.To demonstrate that they mean it and are 100% committed to the exercise, these followers are asked to sacrifice something—in other words, to give up something they value, like a cow, or money, or food.The act of having given up something serves as a prod of sorts, a powerful reminder (lest one slack off) to reflect on one’s relationship with the divine.This giving-up takes place in community so that one gets swept up in a great shift of life-as-usual.The new normal is a common life focused on God. Whether one is taking part in the one-day fast of Yom Kippur or the month-long fast of Ramadan or the surrendering of something of one’s choosing for the forty days of Lent, the giving-up has a definite time-table with well-advertised and ritually-marked start and end dates.

But what about those who aren’t followers of such traditions but want to engage in a similar kind of spiritual exercise (exercise in the sense of an intentional and disciplined activity)? Yow!That’s harder.After all, you’ll give up something without any kind of communal or ritual help.That’s like deciding to give up cigarettes without a support group and without nicotine patches.Still, for those who are up to the challenge, it could be even more rewarding.

So let’s dare to give up something for Lent. How about Me-Centrism? Give up Me-Centrism until April 12 and orient yourself toward God. The phenomenologist and ethicist, Emmanuel Levinas, taught that we might, in the act of treating others as human beings instead of objects, discover a passageway to the extraordinary, the infinite, the transcendent. No promises though. Hopefully, even if you don’t find that passageway, the gift of a simple human interaction is gift enough.And should the checkout clerk or the passenger on the bus respond to your friendly gaze by looking at you like you’re crazy, or looking past you like you don’t exist—well, you’ll know you did your part. And no one can ask more than that.